Welcome to Hyperion Records, an independent British classical label devoted to presenting high-quality recordings of music of all styles and from all periods from the twelfth century to the twenty-first.

Hyperion offers both CDs, and downloads in a number of formats. The site is also available in several languages.

Please use the dropdown buttons to set your preferred options, or use the checkbox to accept the defaults.

Don't show me this message again

Suite No 5 in E major, HWV430

Introduction

Suite No 5 in E major is a step further up the cycle of fifths from ‘youthful’ A major and E is the sharpest (and ‘highest’) key in general use. It was traditionally associated with heaven, but in the works of Handel it would seem that paradise is firmly terrestrial. True, the free-flowing prelude, the allemande and the courante are all lucidly gracious, but Handel dispenses with a sarabande and as his finale offers a variation-set on a tune so earthy in metrical symmetry and diatonic in harmonization that it quickly won the popular title of ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’. Again, Handel steers aristocratic finesse towards a rawly demotic future. Though Handel’s blacksmith, benign in harmony, may attempt celestial levitation in the shooting scales of his final variation, the effect is more comic than transcendent.

Recordings

'Superbly recorded. Highly recommended and unlikely to be surpassed in the near future' (The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs)'The commanding nature of these performances, captured in sound of tremendous presence, cannot be denied. Nicholson captures a Handelian dignity and g ...» More

Danny Driver’s recordings of CPE Bach’s keyboard works have been much admired: praised by critics as deeply stylish and revelatory accounts of eighteenth-century works on a modern piano, with Driver’s impeccable pianism constantly present. Now he ...» More

Philip Martin offers a delectable array of salon music at its finest, from household names such as Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Mendelssohn and Grieg to somewhat rarer gems from Tekla Badarzewska and Ethelbert Nevin.» More

The harmonious blacksmith is the fourth and final movement of George Frideric Handel’s (1685–1759) fifth harpsichord Suite from the first volume of his [8] Suites de Pièces pour le Clavecin published in London in 1720. The music was written as early as his first year in London, 1710, or quite possibly brought over with him from the continent—a passage from Handel’s Almira, written in 1704, is very like The harmonious blacksmith; a bourrée by Richard Jones (1680–1740) apparently features almost the same air in a minor key, though it is not known whether Jones preceded Handel or vice versa.

What is certain is that the Air and variations has nothing whatever to do with a blacksmith, harmonious or otherwise. The fictitious story that Handel first heard the air sung by a blacksmith in Edgware (London) while sheltering in a smithy during a storm was put about by the notoriously inventive antiquarian Richard Clark (1780–1856) in his Reminiscences of Handel (1836). The probable true origin of the nickname derives from a music-seller in Bath named Lintern who had been brought up a blacksmith but turned to music. It was the Air and variations that he was constantly asked to play and so decided to issue the single movement himself entitiling it The harmonious blacksmith. However, no copy of Lintern’s edition has ever surfaced. The earliest known printed version of the music bearing this title dates from 1819—in an arrangement for piano duet.